Bright Lights Film Journal :: May 2010

May 2010 | Issue 68

From the Editor

"Supersize this"

Gary Morris

Articles

Corn-fed Culture: Living Large and "Eating Shit" in King Corn and Fast Food Nation

By Gregory Stephens

"The films analyzed here explore the (crude) question: what are the individual and social consequences of eating shit?"

Minimalist Magic: The Star Trek Look

By Mervyn Nicholson

"By treating the style of the original series as integral to the show — and not as a kind of regrettable defect — we can get a better grasp on the Star Trek phenomenon itself."

Boris Godunov in America: Notes on a Meyerhold Production Resurrected

By Andrew Grossman

"My God! — cried out a querulous voice within me — is it possible that we, artists of the stage, are doomed by the materiality of our bodies to eternal servitude and the representation of crude reality?" ~ Stanislavsky

Looking at Charlie: The Great Dictator

By Alan Vanneman

An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin

A Thousand Blooms: Inside Joss Whedon's Dollhouse

By Lesley Chow

"At a moment when the most feeble signs of self-actualization are seen as a resurgence of feminism, Whedon shows us the melancholy and troubling side of 'girl power.'"

Why Do We Crave Horror? Evolutionary Psychology and Viewer Response to Horror Films

By Maximilian Werner

"We do not realize that 'normal' behavior needs to be explained at all." ~ Laura Cosmides

"Fucking Queer": Eastern Promises and the Traditions of Noir

By Peter Forster

"The filmmaker, having scrupulously established the world of film noir, queers it by shattering the categories — both narrative and cinematic — of the world itself."

Fifty plus Fifty: The Fifty Year Decline and Fall of Hollywood Reconsidered: The Sorrows of Ezra, as Told by Himself

By Alan Vanneman

He worked for Time; that can do things to a man

Living Backward: The Millennials' Alice

By Joseph Natoli

"We are but older children, dear, / Who fret to find our bedtime near." ~ Lewis Carroll, "Child of the Pure Unclouded Brow"

Los Angeles in Theory and Practice: Thom Andersen's Los Angeles Plays Itself

By Madison Brookshire

"In a powerful and precise encomium, Andersen extols the virtues of what he deems to be a kind of homegrown neo-realism."

Ossessione: Shabby Little Shocker?

By D. J. M. Saunders

Or Advanced Guide to Cinematic Survival?

The Irish Queer vs. the IRA Macho: The Subversive Tranny in Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto

By Sara Villa

"The transvestite's camp humor is here used to stress the unsustainability of the military discourses on which the justification of IRA terrorism is based."

Reconceptualizing the Uncanny Vampire: Claire Denis' Trouble Every Day

By Mark Chapman

"We are no longer in an era of vampire stories." ~ Jean-Luc Nancy"

TV Notes: Bandits, Crime Fighters and Bounty Hunters

By Bruno Mikanowski

"When you come at the king, you best not miss."

Early 3D, A Case Study: The Teleview and The Man from M.A.R.S.

By Henry William Francis Rownd

"Less than a month after premiering for an 'indefinite time' at the Selwyn, the Teleview was pulled."

Movies

Bigger Than Life: Nicholas Ray in the Life of the Gray Flannel Darkness

By Erich Kuersten

"Art, entertainment, and genuine fear and tragedy rarely all filter down into a deceptively 'normal American family film' with such quiet desperation."

Troubled Waters: Crashing into The Cove

By Ilan Kapoor

"To twist Gayatri Spivak's famous phrase, it's a case of (mostly) 'white men saving cute dolphins from yellow men.'"

"Riveting" — Not! Gerald Peary's For the Love of Movies — The Story of American Film Criticism

By Alan Vanneman

Talking heads, talking of talking heads

When Luck Runs Out: Preston Sturges' Gallic Swan Song

By Cullen Gallagher

"I have always contended that in addition to talent, success depends on a little bit of luck, and my luck seemed to have run out, professionally at least." ~ Preston Sturges, on the making of The French, They Are a Funny Race

"A Walking Childish Id": Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass

By Lee Weston Sabo

"Superheroes live best in their own world." ~ David Mazzucchelli

In Praise of Dangerous Men: Patton (1970)

By Erich Kuersten

"The very idea of losing is hateful to Americans."

Michael Powell's Peeping Tom: An Introduction

By Mark Chapman

Take your seats for a "dark-hearted, midnight fantasia of ecstatic sadism, voyeurism and psychosis"!

Outstanding Defense Mechanisms: The Phrenology of Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island

By Joseph Jon Lanthier

Shutter Island might be the only psychological thriller abetted by a lack of interest in the psyche.

Someone to Fight over Me: Feminism, S&M, and the Daemonic in Twilight

By Erich Kuersten

"The pain is my only reminder that he [Edward] was real." ~ Bella (Kristen Stewart)

Valentine's Day: It Sucks Being a Woman

By Amy Stotz

"Traditional gender roles seem to be in no danger of evolving."

Wild Love: Spike Jonze Meets Maurice Sendak in Where the Wild Things Are

By Dorian Fox

"I'll eat you up. I love you so."

The Children Are Watching You: Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon

By Ian Johnston

"Like any old-style modernist, Haneke likes to make the audience work."

Stars

Forgotten Charleys I: Charley Bowers: Silent Comedy's Wizard of the Bizarre

By Imogen Sara Smith

"He is Aladdin and the camera is his lamp." ~ James R. Quirk

Forgotten Charleys II: Charley Chase: Mr. Normal Unleashes His Comic Demon

By Imogen Sara Smith

"He could be suave or awkward, likable or pesky, average or eccentric, a winner or a loser, a fussy nerd or the life of the party, all the while remaining Charley Chase."

Cary Grant: Prince of Denmark

By Eric G. Wilson

Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in Sylvia Scarlett

"If we take Grant seriously, we must contend with an extreme difficulty: what appears to be fake, an actor portraying a character, might be real; what we normally think of as real, a person gesturing in the everyday world, might well be artificial."

Nuts and Nice Messes: On Laurel and Hardy

By Dan Callahan

"Life isn't short enough . . ." ~ Laurel in Sons of the Desert (1934)

Florence Lawrence: "The First Movie Star"

By Christopher Sandford

"Lawrence had become a movie star for many reasons — gentleness, grace, that silky hair, and what Laemmle assessed as 'sensational bubbies.'"

Movie Art

"What More Could a Boy Want?": An Interview with Jim McDermott

By Gary Morris

"I'm using the computer (Photoshop) a bit more than I like to admit, but I still love traditional illustration, watercolor and oils."

Directors

A Writer's Evolution: An Interview with Eddie Muller

By Matthew Sorrento

"[My film] is stylized and theatrical because the story is so telescoped — we have a life-and-death outcome played out over 20 actual minutes."

Portrait of a Soundscapist: An Interview with Peter Strickland

By Zsolt Gyori

"I had to allow time to let experience ferment inside me, and by then you forget whether what you went through was useful or not!"

Columns

Bright Sights: Recent DVDs:Lola Montès, City Girl, The Constance Talmadge Collection (Her Night of Romance, Her Sister from Paris), The Norma Talmadge Collection (Kiki, Within the Law), Black Snow, Permissive, The Italian Straw Hat

By Gordon Thomas

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

Festivals

Tout Ne Va Pas Bien: Rendez-vous with French Cinema 2010

By Megan Ratner

"Vestiges of French customs and family life remain throughout these films, yet their concerns testify to a rapidly shifting society."

Books

America's Film Legacy, by Daniel Eagan

Reviewed by Matthew Kennedy

Robert Altman: The Oral Biography, by Mitchell Zukoff

Reviewed by Matthew Kennedy

A Short History of Cahiérs du Cinema, by Emilie Bickerton

Reviewed by Ian Johnston

Hollywood Under Siege: Martin Scorsese, the Religious Right, and the Culture Wars, by Thomas R. Lindlof

Reviewed by Colm O'Shea